Free Republic

SIDNEY, MT — The quiet town of Sidney, Montana made headlines recently after a transdimensional portal appeared in the home of Bob and Cynthia Allen. Sources say the wife accidentally opened the time-tunneling tesseract while trying to find the power button on the remote. The cat was sucked into the otherworldly vortex before the couple realized what was happening. "I just pushed all the colored buttons, hoping one of them turned it off!" screamed Cynthia while clutching the kitchen table with her husband and watching her favorite bowl disappear into the otherworldly schism. "This is why I just let you...

China's Baidu Inc will use its ChatGPT-like app Ernie Bot to create a "revolutionary" version of its popular search engine, the company's CEO said on Wednesday (Feb 22). Baidu, which has invested heavily in artificial intelligence in recent years, is regarded as at the forefront of efforts to create a Chinese rival to the AI platform developed by OpenAI and backed by Microsoft Corp. Ahead of Ernie Bot’s launch in March, Baidu CEO Robin Li told reporters on a conference call to discuss fourth-quarter results that users would be more dependent on the Baidu search engine once it was embedded...

Sorry folks, other than meritocracy is not acceptable in a society where we routinely use -- and rely on -- things that are dangerous. If you'd like to go back to the 5th Century or so, then its fine. Which is where we're headed if we don't cut it out. Personally, I prefer not to get there by being poisoned due to a train derailment or freezing to death when its -5F outside. RTWT

One of the characteristics of the modern world that you can see in people all around us is an intense dissatisfaction. Not just with social systems or with politics or whatever else, but with themselves. At a deep level, there is a profound alienation which these people have from themselves, indeed from human-ness itself. While they love hedonism and perversion, they hate the actual human being himself. Culturally, this is readily seen in pretty much every culture war position that the Left takes. Pregnancy is a “disease” and a child is an unwanted “clump of cells” that gets in the...

Princeton neuroscientist Michael Graziano warns in a new essay published by The Wall Street Journal, artificial intelligence-powered chatbots are doomed to be dangerous sociopaths that could pose a real danger to human beings. With the rise of chatbots like ChatGPT, powerful systems that can imitate the human mind to an impressive degree, AI tools have become more accessible than ever before. But those algorithms will glibly fib about anything that suits their purpose. To make align them with our values, Graziano thinks, they're going to need consciousness. "Consciousness is part of the tool kit that evolution gave us to make...

Optical High Density Nanolaser Array Driver Researchers have developed a new all-optical method for driving multiple high-density nanolaser arrays using light traveling down a single optical fiber. The optical driver creates programmable patterns of light via interference. Credit: Myung-Ki Kim, Korea University New all-optical pumping chip-based nanolaser technology could aid in meeting the ever-growing need to move more data faster. A new all-optical approach for driving multiple highly dense nanolaser arrays has been developed by researchers in Korea. The method could enable chip-based optical communication links that process and move data much faster than current electronic-based devices. “The development of...

Spotify's (SPOT.N) CEO Daniel Ek renewed his attack on Apple (AAPL.O) on Wednesday in a series of tweets alleging the iPhone maker "gives itself every advantage while at the same time stifling innovation and hurting consumers". Ek tagged a number of sympathetic business leaders in his 21-tweet thread, including Musk, Microsoft president Brad Smith, and Proton founder Andy Yen. On Monday, the world's richest person Elon Musk criticized the fee Apple charges software developers - including his Twitter business - for in-app purchases, and posted a meme suggesting he was willing to "go to war" rather than pay it.

I am standing on the stoop of an empty brick row house in Pittsburgh, looking into my phone and rotating my head from side to side. The house is in an alleyway facing the back of a church. The mailbox is stuffed with rain-soaked junk mail. The rental company’s website finishes scanning my face and an algorithm decides that I do resemble the photo on the passport I uploaded earlier. I get a text with a temporary six-digit key code. There is no one waiting to greet me as I enter. Inside, there’s a living room painted crisp white, a...

For years, the Russian government has been attempting to create an 'Iron Man'-type of suit for battle. This had remained all talk, but in recent years, this world superpower has appeared to have started testing the use of exoskeletons on the battlefield with Ukraine. Even prior to recent Russian media announcements about their hope to build a superhuman exoskeleton for soldiers, giving them the ability to both carry more weapons and have more stamina, Russian powers had been rumored to have testing out a suit of armor that would make Star Wars fans nostalgic. Russian media stated that artillery forces...

Black Friday is nearly upon us, but the annual online price-drop frenzy seems to be losing its shine. Numerous reports highlight that discounting may not be all it seems, and buyers would be best to shop around. But behind the scenes, the industry is also seeing the demise of another popular craze Amazon was trying so hard to make a thing. With its voice-interface device, Alexa, the global ecommerce and tech behemoth in 2014 set in train a fashion for speech interfaces in the home, which had keen households around the world demanding their AI house guests to tell them...

If any of you didn't get a chance to see this.

For years, law enforcement has been using non-lethal weapons, including LRAD – Long-Range Acoustic Device – which blasts sound waves to cease behaviour by temporarily disorienting the intended victims. But while these devices serve practical and easily identifiable purposes for both military and law enforcement, there exists a more insidious use for this kind of technology. In February of 2022, alternative media reported on the use of LRAD during anti-vaccine mandate protests in Canberra. Australian Federal Police admitted using the device during a Canberra Convoy Freedom rally outside Parliament House.A number of videos and images hit social media showing people...

A research team based out of the University of Waterloo has developed a drone-powered device that can use WiFi networks to see through walls. The device, nicknamed Wi-Peep, can fly near a building and then use the inhabitants’ WiFi network to identify and locate all WiFi-enabled devices inside in a matter of seconds. The Wi-Peep exploits a loophole the researchers call polite WiFi. Even if a network is password protected, smart devices will automatically respond to contact attempts from any device within range. The Wi-Peep sends several messages to a device as it flies and then measures the response time...

Moreover similar alerts were issued in the regions of Cherkassy and Kirovograd, and in the city of Zaporozhye KIEV, October 20./TASS/.The city administration of Ukraine's capital Kiev declared an air raid warning in the early hours of Thursday. "Attention! Air raid alert issued for Kiev. We urge everyone to urgently proceed to civil protection shelters," the city administration said in its Telegram channel...

As the election season is upon us, I want to take this moment in time to reflect upon the fact that the CCP is not a friend of the United States. This became very clear last week, as I watched a pre-screen of the new Epoch Times documentary about the CCP called “The Final War.” I was shocked at the evidence presented that the CCP’s historic and ultimate goal is truly about global domination. In fact, the CCP has historically defined and declared the United States to be its its enemy #1. All I can say is that when this...

What would you do? (“And what in your comfortable urban life has ever prepared you for that decision?”) Just a great scene from James Burke's Connections Series 1, Episode 1. I highly recommend you watch the show. It is old (50 years old!)but it is insightful.

Electronic Vehicles are being pushed on the public before the technology is ready. This article by Andrew Thomas addresses the folly of this approach.These are excerpts from this excellent piece: "...You cannot tell progressive politicians that the technology for EV’s is still in its infancy. You cannot convince them that the current state of technology makes them completely impractical and unworkable on a national scale. We are at the same point in technological history as we were in 1896, when we transitioned from “horseless carriages” powered by steam and electric motors to gasoline engines. What we see on the EV...

Smart technology is surveillance technology. It is not smarter because of its inherent qualities, but because it sends and receives data that allows it to be ‘smarter’ in manipulating users. The smart part of smart technology comes from human beings. So does the stupid part when people sacrifice their privacy and independence for the benefits of technology being shaped to them. Clean energy is even more of a myth. The Inflation Increase Act doles out another stream of billions toward the inefficient forms of energy generation that the government has been subsidizing for over 50 years because some Madison Avenue...

Summary:How is it possible for proprietary AI models to enter patient care, without extensive peer reviews for algorithmic transparency? That's a question we should be asking about Epic's Deterioration Index, which has been utilized for several use cases, including COVID-19 patient risk models.The conversation about machine learning development largely centers on how individual organizations proceed - and whether they use adequate data, methods, algorithms, transparency, and a process that guarantees models do not go into production until they are tested and vetted.At the other end of the spectrum are AI models developed by Google and Facebook that are completely opaque,...

Amazon.com Inc. will let brands and merchants send marketing emails to shoppers, a risky bid to boost sales that could inundate inboxes with spam. The company announced the initiative Wednesday at the Amazon Accelerate conference in Seattle, where it demonstrates new features to the independent businesses that sell more than half of the products on Amazon.com. Merchants will be able to send free emails to new shoppers, repeat customers and their biggest spenders through a new "Tailored Audiences" tool, which will also let sellers monitor the results. The tool has been in testing this year and will be available to...